This blog is dedicated to the memory of David Weintraub, who took on insidious astroturfers and won.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

The Church of the Abundant Life

The sun cracked the crest of Kellogg Hill on the eastern end of the San Gabriel Valley as I popped my first top in the early Sunday morning gloaming. I watched in humble gratification as the beer foam sizzled and swelled briefly out of its hole before retreating to safety back inside the ice-cold metallic cylinder of abundant life.

Budweiser. Tall boys.

Rosario had invited me to visit his church for the Sunday morning services. It was only after meeting up that morning in the parking lot at MacDonalds that he informed me that the Church of the Abundant Life in the Parque was actually now his "former" church.

The second Bud obliterated the dry egg yolk gathering in my craw. The third washed away most everything else standing between me and a personal relationship with my Lord and Saviour. I cracked a sharp burp and sauntered over to relieve myself in the Spring honeysuckle blooming over the chainlink fence at the rear of the parking lot.

Rosario snorted when I returned to the hood of the 1963 Chevy and fished another cold one from the ice cooler of the abundant life.

--Whosoever shall come to the father through the Son shall drink in the spirit of eternal life.

--Shit man, we're out of beer. Do they take a piss in Heaven?

--You will shed your earthly countenance for all time upon entering the kingdom of the father. I believe that includes the shedding of your bladder, among other consternations...

--What about my dick? Do I have to give that up too?

--You will be neither man nor woman on that glorious day.

--What? You mean I'll be like one of those aphrodites? Why can't I just stay here and be me, man?

I lavisly scratched my abundant scrotum for emphasis. Rosario waited until I finished before tilting his head back in guzzlement. He wiped his mouth on his flannel shirt.

--If we could 'just stay here' we would have no need of salvation. There would be no Father, no Son, no Holy Spirit.

--That sounds pretty good to me, actually. Sorta how I would like to picture heaven, in fact.

--The problem is we can't stay here. Well, we can stay here, but 'here' won't be 'here' for very long. 'Here' will become 'there' and we cannot experience ourselves as ourselves outside the very moment of that singular understanding of the experience, which passes by in a flash, and instantly changes our relationship, which changes us. The tree grows, adds branches which become limbs. The tree's shape changes in time until it become unrecognizable to the image of the tree we hold in our minds. The tree's leaves turn yellow and fall to the ground. The tree itslef finally dies and disappears. The image of the tree we hold in our minds also does not exist. It is purely a work of the imagination.

--What the fuck are you talking about?

--Temporality. The very purpose of living is to continually remind 'us' that 'we' are not who 'we' think 'we' are and just when 'we' think 'we' are here 'we' look into the mirror to find someone else staring back at 'us' from a different place and time.

--Your fulla shit, dude. And stop putting everything into quotation marks with your fingers when you talk to me. Thats irritating as shit, man. When I look into the mirror I know exactly who I am and where I stand. I may not like what I see but at least I have the knowledge.

--Forgive him Father for he knows not what the fuck he is talking about.

--Shit, we're out of beer. Can we stop at the liquor store on the way to church?

********************

People milled about in small groups, talking earnestly and listening to each other with an exagerrated sense of "connection." So this was the Jesus Movement I'd been hearing about, from chicks mostly. It seemed that most every one whose pants I wished to enter had converted recently. This circumstance was an immediate detriment in the pursuit of my shortterm goals. I took it as a personal affront.

I was a modern-day Job, down to the boils on my face and the afflictions of my soul. I felt tortured not salved, humiliated not glorified in His presence. Yet, I felt a small spark of hope somewhere inside that day that maybe I could find the connection I sought, the validation I needed in order to enter through the front door to the Kingdom, instead of constantly feeling like I needed to slink around outside without the key to open the locked door.

It didn't help matters that Rosario's own goal for that day appeared to be much different than mine. His spirit became redfaced with vengeance from the moment we arrived. I recognized a girl and went over to say hi. I hadn't seen her since graduation night, the night I found myself being booked into the West Covina jail, strip searched, full body cavity searched, bent, folded, spindled and mutilated. And had not considered the portent for even a single moment.

--Pete! You've come. So nice to see you. What have you been doing with yourslef since graduation?

--Court appearances, mostly. Some community service. Getting high every day, not working at all, just hanging out. And you?

Grace laughed. She had the prettiest, sweetest smile that would stand the test of time.

--Oh, Pete. You've been drinking already this morning?

She smiled warmly and reached out to touch my shoulder. I looked into her eyes for a moment, until someone else came up to break the brief spell. As she turned her attention to him I went off looking for Rosario, who had found a spot off to the side of the concrete stage under a tree.

I would not see her again until today on Facebook. She is a middle-aged beauty elegant, smiling and cheerully appearing.

Haunting me.

Rosario had been absolutely correct in his wisdom on that long ago misbegotten Sunday morning. The image of the tree which I had nurtured in my mind all of these years is not the tree.

20 comments:

By the end of your piece, I was literally in tears. I had been slicing an onion while reading.

The beauty of this new entry is that it gives me an excuse not to make a new one. You have a bit of Nora Desmond in you, a need to be in the limelight. So I'm gonna let your short story bask in the #1 slot.

I had already got my screenshots and links together. But this is better, as I am feeling a bit groggy in regards to doing the writing part. The title will be Degrees of Kevin Bacon Gone Bad. It'll be a continuance of my newfound interest in the Sociology of Cinema.

It looks like you've gotten over your doubts and regrets about past relationships. This appears to have been about the emotional trauma described in your Pulitzer Prize worthy Flutter Wings being resolved.

As we get older, it's natural to want to find the people we've loved and hurt and all in between and shoot the breeze, make amends, let those fockers know we still think of them from time to time.

Another thing we share is our appreciation for Eastern Philosophy. I've a sneaking suspicion that we are reincarnated, though I admit that can't be proven.

The funkiest part of life has to be that we all eventually die. Some cultures seem to handle that awesome truth in healthy ways. Western culture, on the other hand, could probably do a better job with it.

I definitely agree that there can never be any moment other than now. Sure, psychology clearly plays a role. There can be no present without a past after conception. Can humans ever share the now, come to consensus, and make this a better world? I think so. Is there a part of life that is existential, that can only be understood by individuals, and thus life tends to be alienating in nature? I think that also.

This is where dialectics can bear fruit. This is where the yin-yang takes center stage. Losing the ego doesn't have to result in hysteria or nihilism, being humiliated, and perpetually experiencing torment.

It simply means we need more compassion in this world and less greed. I truly believe Americans will do the right thing when they are aware of what's truly going on. Many people are scared and feel empty. Others are happy but don't recognise the temporal nature of that state or how shallow it may be.

The path to enlightenment is as thin as the edge of a razor. An "I've Got Mine" society has brought us to the precipice of college words. As the great philosopher Rodney King once asked, "Why can't we all just get along?"

The Democratic Party from FDR on has been on the right side of history in regards to trying to bring some social justice. Unfortunately Obama hasn't delivered the goods yet. I'm knocking on wood that he wins in 2012 and takes a left turn.

The economy seems to be finally turning around. Hopefully by the next election unemployment will be low and the Military Industrial Complex will be brought down a notch in regards to its propagating a total disregard for human life.

The only solution I see to the world's problems is to take the money out of the War Industry and put it into peace and social justice.

Heaven needs to be established on Earth. There's no way to prove what's on the other side of life. We can only influence this world.

I apologise for this disjointed, rambling post. As Annette Appollo echoed Meatloaf, "I tried. I tried."

This was an excellent comment by u soc.Most amerikkkan dupes conflate eastern philo w new age californian hippie dopiness.

It is nothing of the sort.And it is a thin razors edge.

Its a philo that must be lived. There is acceptance but no forgiveness. The path is narrow. Jesus was a buddhist but the way was too hard for the decadent west so the message was perverted into the absurdity we call christianity.$$$$$

Thanks. I looked into it. I know what you mean about the kumbaya money part of it. Heck, anyone can see how Oprah has raked in cash off of New Age ideas. Brett Kimberlin's whole schtick has been centered around making money off of it. You probably remember Down and Out in Beverly Hills, the Bette Midler character. Or even in Happy Gilmore, Kevin Nealon was telling Happy to be the ball, shit like that.

What I'm trying to say is Buddhism's #1 rule isn't all life is suffering for nothing.

Being a lefty doesn't mean ranting or being a phoney. There's a fine line between being a proponent of love and a whore.

I think Jesus existed. I doubt he was God or even an incarnation. However, I refuse to be an asshole like many atheists. I do believe in God or something that's tough to put into words. I probably fit into the agnostic category but lean towards belief.

It is strange how atheists tend to dominate at Daily Kos. The buggers at pffugee are licking their chops over Church pedophile stories. It's as if they're happy those things have been going on. Their anger doesn't seem organic.

They are also ridiculously racist. True socialists would not be supporting the Iranian theocracy, Huey Long, Richard Nixon as a liberal, big brother cameras in urban areas, et al- those things you noticed. It's sad to say, but pffugee, MLW, FSZ, etc. are mostly each comprised of five to ten people doing 96% of the posting. They are examples of how to not grow a blog. They are advertisements for Daily Kos. They are about keeping the page hits in the family. That's probably inadvertent. But I think it's the result.

I think MSOC got mad at me because I tracked down her supporting tax cuts for the rich and Fox News. She called that stalking. She was mad at you too at that point. They don't mind a Blews posting insane, but don't you dare shed light on the pus and whatnot oozing out of their scabs.

MSOC is the Nora Desmond of the whiteysphere. Fakeleft (Failreft) is the male version.

And now even Francis Holland has hit the gutter by posting that Moulitsas might have been in the porn industry. Stu Piddy is aiming higher. Dave is dead. Dkos seems to have survived the CIA thingie. But Moulitsas didn't survive the payola and townhouse memo scandals. Sure, he's a self-righteous, fake lefty, hack no talent. He's rich. Man, Francis should have stopped at theorising he's a latent homosexual. That would have worked. Maybe Holland is a narcissist. He should know better. Not that the people who went after him aren't creepy losers.

Obviously people like MSOC and Karmafish are. Fairleft also. Maybe Fairleft receives a disability check. I don't think he's posting that crap out of a cubicle. He's clearly a racist and very confused.

Failreft, as you call him, has come up with yet another example of himself being a fake lefty. He has issues with abortion.

"Maybe I assume too much, but the eighth on your list seems to say men should have no say over abortion/anti-abortion law, and that there should be no abortion/anti-abortion laws. Not that I'm not liberally pro-abortion (just not completely?)"

He doesn't even adequately explain what he's talking about. Classic diarrhea of the mouth.

I'm probably wrong, but I think the guy who wrote the diary Fakey was responding to deleted his response to failreft and replaced it with a spruced up new one. If so, then he is a fake and in cahoots with Laurajohn, and FSZ and PFFugee are clearly false controlled opposition meant to keep DKos refugees within the family. Like gatekeepers for containing inevitable criticism of Markos Moulitsas. Mary Scott O'Connor was that kind of gatekeeper. Of course, she wasn't doing that wittingly, imho. One of the websites on that dude's blogroll is Docudharma, one of those DKos offshoots. Another is Right of Assembly, one in which MattyJack posts at. Probably my eyes and memory are playing games with me about thinking a post was scrubbed. But maybe not.

I bet we could run through Failreft's past postings at DKos, MLW, and elsewhere and find tons of crap showing he is utterly confused or something strange. It's just easier for me to run out the most recent list of his "progressive" flubs which you exposed. E.G. Calling for Big Brother cameras in urban areas, supporting Huey Long, affirmative action, and the repressive Iranian theocracy, calling Richard Nixon the last liberal President, etc..

He said there was no genocide or humanitarian crisis in Darfur. He said Sudan was being harrassed by both Condolizard and Obama.

In another entry, he referred to Joan Rivers as an anti-racist warrior. He labelled her adversary (Darcus Howe) as a "professional black guy."

In other entries, he railed against immigration. In June of 2006 he asked whether militia leaders are the true leaders of the real left. There's your proof that you weren't far off in saying that the pffugeeists would find a decent comfort level with the teanuts. He also had high praise for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in 2007. One of the strangest examples coming out of the fake left is their admiration for the Iranian dictatorship. There must be a way to attack US foreign policy without getting in bed with oppressive regimes.

The Frankfurt School have represented leftist, progressive thought for decades. They attacked western culture, but they did so without getting in bed with Stalinism and oppressive communism. Where is failreft's nuance and subtlety? Who do such fake leftists think they're fooling? Why isn't there higher-level thinking on the net? What a joke.

"Nice while it lasted. The sickening spectacle of Barack step-and-fetching for Hollywood AIPAC money reveals him as just like all the rest; hacks all to willing to kiss the ring of Zionist Israel. We knew Hillary was owned by AIPAC, but with Obama too bowing to the massa, all hope for any meaningful change in Iraq and Iran is lost."

Failreft smells like a cynical political operative.

Here's a bonus link. He didn't like how one poster had criticised soccer moms who vote Republican.

Reft seems to have lost all his traffic, too, since he outed himself as a minuteman.

This is the main problem with the internet-fed. They are not really able to think for themselves and when they try to connect the dots of everything they read....it ends up as intellectual and ideological incoherence.

Plus, its an ideology steeped in misunderstood theory, misapprehended history and a denial of personal biases.

Reft, for instance is Irish....and as you are acutely aware, there is a very strong undercurrent (in many cases overt) of racism in the Irish working class, especially against blacks. Some of the most virulent forms of racism exist in the Irish ghettos of Boston.

The Reft's and the LauraJohn's are unwittingly susceptible to propaganda and wear proudly their foolish beliefs in blogs as more reputable purveyors of information than the MSM.

While the MSM certainly is not perfect nor above propagandizing, they are not the sewers of disinformation to which these morons subscribe.

They are almost too perfect representatives of the weak-minded racistic masses who succumbed to the NAZI scam in the 1930s for the so-called left, who tipped the scales in favour of der fuehrer.

Now, its the game of The Dems and the Republikkkans are the same, so lets make oursleves irrelevant by living in a fantasy world.

RIOTOUS!

All one has to consider is what the state of the nation would be if a righticized MacCain had won the presiditzy and filled two maybe three SCOTUS seats during his term.

Not too mentin, yur not hearing much form the fakeleft about the Wall Street reform bill and the SEC taking on Goldman Sachs.

These are not bravura enuff for the fakeleft. They will not be happy until a complete regimen of leftist prescriptions is instituted, forgetting of course that a plurality of Amerikkkans consider themselves conservative, a very large contingent of whom are publicly, vocally and nastily aggressive in their hatred of even moderate social reforms like Obamacare.

This in itslef is understandble, except that the fakeleft does nothing in RL to counteract the the rightards, in fact they hide behind behind blogs and third party fantasy candidates, atheism, and something they believe is "socialism" all the while working for the man and doing approximately nothing to help the situation in any constructive way.

Ditto the Tea Parties. Say what you will, and I think they are a clear and present danger to whatever remains of freedom and decency in this blasted ruin of a country, but they are organizing and in fact using Alinsky's tactics to do so.

Whither the fakeleft?

Nowhere.

Scored two freebies to the Mavs game last week and took son. We had a good time. The Mavs look pretty good, a far different team from the run and gun Mavs of the past. This team might have some playoff legs for a change. They play defense and rebound and they have some toughness in Caron Butler and Shawn Marion, where in the past the owner was the toughest guy on the floor.

The part about Gracie I threw in at the last moment when I googled on her last week and suffered a moment of longing for the past and a life that was not to be....these social networking sites sort of fill me with existential dread....but then again so does most everything else these daze.

\:o)

I think its OK for you to post your Kevin Bacon bit now. Thanks for not immediately jumping in with another throw away offtopic Youtube extravaganza about the volcano chemtrails, or WTF.

A two man blog can work well. Brian Nowhere and I did pretty well with his blog, and we sometimes left the same post up for a week or more. My humour chops were working pretty good in those daze, maybe I can find that vein again.....seems to require teh weed to put me in the mood and I'm still living la vida boring these daze.

I heard Ricky Martin finally came out and admitted he was a homo.

That was about as startling as George Michael or Elton admitting he was gay....like, uh, what else is new?

Hmmm. Volcano chemtrails. Well, sulfur from volcanos can enable cirrus. Or maybe you're conflating the bit about Scientology's volcano schtick with my weather mitigation one. And another thing, has there ever been a greater word to hit the blogosphere than schtick?

I was going to come up with some conspiracy theory to combat the Pffugee one about the media, but I don't want to take away from the beautiful clarity of your second to last post. It's not an easy task to show how those fake lefties are somewhat aligned with TeaNuts and Minutemen. I know I have trouble articulating it.

Refty is a volume blogger. What he lacks in interesting entries, he makes up with excessive use of copy, paste, and war porn. It's no surprise he doesn't get the traffic he might have in the past. It's a jumping the shark kind of thing. Personally, I stop going after certain topics once I realise there's been a saturation point. I done good a few months back getting into the satanic ritual abuse mkultra hoax. Not that there wasn't an mkultra, just saying how it's been turned into a cottage industry by conspiracy theory freaks. FakeLeft could use some new material.

I'm tired of blogging. I liked the idea of being part of a big group. That's the best way to make sure there are people to watch your back, bounce off ideas, etc.. That dream was destroyed by Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, and their ilk.

This could become a decent place. For one we needn't worry about it being whitewalled. I don't think google ever deletes these things. Secondly, it's in honour of Dave Weintraub and thus anti-whiteyspheric in nature. You have as much right to blog here as me, seeing that we hit it off at Dave's Joint under the Reign of Antoinette. By the way, she put Dave's old place back up. I'm proud of her for doing so. I don't think Dave would have been ashamed of any of it. He came up with a lot of great stuff. The conformists made fun of him, but in the long run, he was right, and they were wrong. Dave put the final nail into DKos' reputation. Kos even showed up in one of Dave's last entries, a GBCW one if I'm not mistaken, just to make fun of him. Dave had more lefty in his pinkie than Kos does in his whole body. (That's a variation of McEnroe's saying he had more natural ability in his pinkie than Lendl did in his own hand. A fabulous quote if ever there was one, [Ed Grimley]I must say [/Ed Grimley].

I like a bit of drama with my sports. You have Mark Cuban prancing around. I don't know why, but I like him. It's tough not to feel bad about Dirk not having a ring. Funny thing is he was selected one pick before Captain Paul Pierce. If the Celtics can't win the title this year, somehow I am rooting for the Mavs. I don't like Phil Jackson and Kobe. The Cavs act mighty pretentious for a team that's never won anything but the regular season. Orlando maybe. Superman is a good guy.

That Quentin Richardson dude on the Heat is bad news. It looks like he might have gotten KG suspended for a game. It shouldn't matter. The C's will win that series in possibly a sweep. They might also shock the world by beating LeBron in the following series. The Celtics look pretty good all things considered. A couple young guys like Big Baby and Tony Allen have emerged. As long as Doc doesn't go too old too often, the Celtics are a lot better than their regular season record. KG looks good right now. He should be even better next year. People are writing him off, but they fail to recognise he had major knee surgery which usually needs a year or two for recovery. He's older of course and with a lot of mileage. But he was defensive player of the year in 2008. Boston fans are feeling a lot better about the team's chances after last night. A Dallas-Boston finals would not surprise me.

Life is tough. We all have regrets. We all fear the unknown (death). There's great pressure on us to clean up our baggage once we hit the second half of our gigs. But I think you're ahead of the game. Just remember to be extra nice to the Mrs. and your children. They'll take care of you in 20 or 40 years or whenever God tells you it's time to get out of the pool.

I think some of the biggest injustices of all time have been where good words get perverted. Gay used to be a good one. Now even homosexual people don't want to be called gay. Back in the day, to be gay meant to be in good spirits.

Spook should be a good word. Too bad it has been turned into a racial epithet.

Fricken sassafrassa some words that couldn't be used in the past are now nothing special. The youngins probably don't realise it, but suck used to be a curse word.

I'm definitely burnt out on blogging. When you're not getting paid, somehow writer's block is more likely to arise. I have an image in my head of the new entry. I'm fascinated by the Hollywood code. I've seen a couple movies from between 1930-35 before it really got enforced. Unfortunately, one of them seemed to be total exploitation. The other was actually quite good. Then there was the film noir era. I don't think it was anything special, Sunset Boulevard nonwithstanding.

I feel myself almost done with this movie fad I got into recently. It's probably a similar reaction to yours of getting older and more nostalgic, yet a different manifestation. Your one is probably healthier, while mine has probably been a form of escape, and I'm merely using the sociological schtick to try to justify even further wasting of my time.

It'd be nice if Eric S. popped in. Being a film maker, I bet he'd have tons of interesting comments to add. Plus, he's the kind of dude I'd love talking with about anything other than the Middle East. Those powder kegs I could do without. I'd add him to the blogroll, if he wanted. I'm willing to open this thing up to anyone with a decent level of honesty and fair play. I'm willing to go Peeder style and only delete things that are illegal or out regular guys.

Aaah, I see you were donkeytale at Brian's website. I'm skimming through what I can see through archive.org. I see you guys busted DKos for having a George Bush buddy as a sponsor. That's from one of your pieces.

Wow. I truly was in my blogprime at Nowhere. Actually, I was doink good at BooMan's too until the MF'er banned me for the third time.

\:o)

Hoepfully you can dig some more out of the archives. Too bad you can't find more PFF schtick. I would pay for you to resurrect a few of my literary masterpieces....

Sometimes I forget how good I was....we pre-dated Francis by a few years, making fun of MAMZ's swishiness, altho credit where due, "MAMZ" is the best schtick in the history of the whiteysphere, with "whiteysphere" itself an FLH derivative, coming in a close second. "Schtick" is not bad either. I loves me sum jewish comedians.....yes, Eric would be great. I like Noom too, BTW.

Of course, Shadowthief would be an awesome catch for any blog. Anybody seen him lately?

I'm not really on my game these daze, too much RL getting in the way, but I won't complain....RL is really the best place to be.

I'll hang in there with the cinema schtick but I'm a bit rusty> Irarely watch the boob tube and seldom go the flicks anymore.

Jeesh. We had two hot dogs, a popcorn, a bag of peanuts, and two sodas at the b-ball game and the tab was like $30.00! I expect a table dance for that type of outlay. Reminded me of the movies. Nothing is worse than paying like $8 for a tcket then another $20 at the snatch bar, all for the pleasure of some too loud, too boring crappy Hollywood product.

I liked film noir, BTW. I like expressionism in the arts. Nathanael West one of my favourite writers of all time.

Maybe we should do Oprah's schtick and hold some movie discussion/book discussion threads.

"Miss Lonelyhearts" by West one of the depression-era masterpieces of Amerikkkan lit. A truly great, devastating book. His "Day of the Locust" is more well-known, but not nearly as good. They made a crappy movie out of "locust" in the 70s.

"Touch of Evil" was Orson Welles noir classic. Highlarious because it features Chuck Heston playing a Mexican amd also I believe Janet (not Vivien) Leigh. But Welles steals the show as the corrupt sheriff, or wtf. If you havent seen it, its greatness in a black and white tin can.

Archive.org is limited. You can see some of Nowhereweb and PFF, but I don't think you can see it all. You'll get error messages a lot of times. It's really too bad. Plus, owners can put robot blocks on those. Caches eventually get lost from the search engines. I'm sure law enforcement and whatnot can retrieve anything they want, but I'm not sure even the best amateur cybersleuths can find whatever they want to. Things become needles in haystacks by the sheer amount of data that's accumulated. Deleted error pages replace the cahces, I mean they replace the caches.

Of course the best stuff at Democratic Underground and Daily Kos is gone. Booman has deleted things. I don't like anything being deleted. I mean whole pages from the past that have vanished. I'm not going to be a hypocrite. I realise I've deleted a few posts here I considered as troll spam. I stopped doing that. Only real spam, outing of regular guys, and illegal stuff will be tossed.

I guess I'd let Noom in here. I wish he'd stop calling me shadowthief. I also wish he'd just admit he was Keith Moon at Daily Kos.

I'm surprised you like the MoBettaMeta blog. That's a MarisaCat affiliated schtick. It's still around, but it looks like only someone named Catnip is posting away, maybe with another slob or two.

I find that place along with Marisa's a bit too Kos-centric. It also feels like they are somehow directing traffic to DKos, which should be the last thing they'd want to do, if they were so disgusted with it. I've done that too. In this thread. So pot meet kettle for me I suppose.

Booman's just another version of MSOC without the drama on meds schtick. He ruined a good thing too.

I used to like some of the older DKos threads from years ago, when it was on a topic I was into, because it didn't seem as if the censorship was as bad back then. But now DKos has really become a caricature of an echo chamber. I'm surprised DeeDogg gave up on the place. They're really his kind of people, if you think about it.

These people are sad. They form their little cliques centered around a twerp loser like Moulitsas. The guy says the CIA is a liberal institution with its heart in the right place. That should about wrap up that place in a nutshell to avoid. But noooooo [/Belushi], that soapblox-scoop bullshit is still being milked for all it's worth. We're talking rat milk at this point.

Randi Rhodes was another one of the big message board bitches. Her's used to be pretty big. She's that loud mouth radio host. That was another one I gave the socrates® treatment to. Her producer is a self-described progressive moderate. [/Letterman crescendo cough] And some of MSOC's best friends are Fox Radio producers like AngryRich AKA Phil.I.Stine.

There are a bunch of other big blogs, but they don't appeal to me. There's something about FireDogLake that makes me feel dizzy. By the way, I made the font here bigger. Should be easier on the eyes.

I appreciate and do believe you were a pioneer in exposing Daily Kos.

That you're still on the internet after all that and then Peeder whitewalling, Mary Scott taking that dump on you guys, Booman turning into a turncoat, then MattyJack, and finally LauraJohn is a miracle.

The pressure should be off for people like us. We did the best we could. We sent out a lot of anecdotal evidence and whatnot for newbies and lurkers on what's going on and what's pointless to worry about. DKos is still to this day milking their drama of flamefests. It's certainly a model used to generate web hits, imho.

But it's a deadend. The good stuff is hidden. The rest is bland or you know what I mean, the result is always questioning what one would do to be able to get back that lost half hour of reading utter nonsense.

I'll try to find some of your stuff at Political Flesh Feast, but alas, I'm not sure it's all there. It's not easy to search archive.org. The thing loads too slowly. I guess I could give it a try. Last time I did, I only noticed pages in the hundreds. Some were front pages. Some duplicates. The rest entries. There had to be much more than that for one year of a blog like that.

What I don't get about Deedogg is why he'd admit to that and even put up a picture of himself. I can only guess what he did wrong. Must have had to do with him being an attorney. I'm not sure, but Mississippi seems to hold the record for most corrupt judges and lawyers. He's probably eating well, watching a lot of tv in that fancy minimum security prison. Maybe you can write an entry on prison reform, or I will someday. If Noom wants in, I'll need his email address. Eric S. seems to have disappeared. Your Brian friend can be found on facebook. Now that would be a coup to get him back in the game. I guess I could email abbeysbooks and tell her the username log in is the email address. But someone ran over her dog last year, and she hasn't seemed to be the same person since. Of course, we'd need a pro-Palestine person in here too to offset Noom. Otherwise, we might as well change the blog name to Mossad R US.

I haven't paid for a sporting event in years. Every couple years a relative gets some freebies and I'll go to Fenway. $5 for a dixie cup full of budweiser ain't gonna cut it.

That Oprah movie or book club idea is a good one. Probably movies that are available at youtube. Or if you did a book, I'd just gather info off the net.

I saw Miss Lonely Hearts with Montgomery Clift a month or two ago. I'm sure the book was better, more cynical, but I'm following you on that one.

I guess my distaste for Film Noir is from watching Double Indemnity. It got such great reviews, and then I felt let down with what I saw.

Another thing I don't get is when people say a movie is dated. I think that's a kind way of saying the film sucked. If a story or movie is good, it's universal. I think something being dated is a myth.

I'm only seeing clips at youtube for Touch of Evil. I guess I should just reveal the movies I saw the other day I was going to blog on and then maybe I won't need to. I saw The Brave with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando. It was awful. The story was idiotic. Apparently Depp changed the book too much. He suckered Brando into it because on the surface it was highlighting the bad treatment of Native Americans. It's one of those movies where you have to start making stuff up to make it look good. Some type of license if you get my drift.

The pre-code flicks I saw were Of Human Bondage with Howard and Davis. Excellent. The other one was Night Nurse with Barbara Stanwyck. Total exploitation. You have to see it to know what I mean. I guess Warner Bros. was the Fox TV of the time, pushing envelopes, art be damned. She had nice legs and a sweet smile, I'll give her that. And I think I was too harsh on Swanson for her role as Nora Desmond. That could be the greatest movie of all time or way up there.

Another oddity. WTF is a Susan Hu? She blogged for Kos, Booman, and then with obvious disinfo focker Larry Johnson.... I'm reading through that MoBetaMeta thread linked to from your Nowhereweb piece. It's a lot of noise to me. I tried figuring it out a long time ago to no avail. Funny thing is, Curmudgette and Curmudgeon (shadowthief?) ended up involved as was MSOC and numerous other self-absorbed biatchkas like supersoling. While I was skimming through Brian's website, I noticed he said he got an email from Curmudgette. Strange shit has been going on for real over the years. Some coincidence, other the kind of convolution we experienced at the same time through MattyJack's made up shit.